Good morning friends. In observance of Memorial Day in the United States, The Firearm Blog will not be publishing any new content today – we will resume normal operations tomorrow. Please take a moment to appreciate the freedoms that we enjoy, paid for those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of liberty. As a sobering reminder, the estimated total number of U.S. deaths in war since the birth of our Nation is 1,354,664. And that number does not include our wounded, missing in action and the casualties of our allies.

Be safe, have fun and we’ll see you tomorrow.

Memorial Day 2019 – Sacrifice

Credit: Wikicommons

The Bixby letter is a brief, consoling message sent by President Abraham Lincoln in November 1864 to Lydia Parker Bixby, a widow living in Boston, Massachusetts, who was thought to have lost five sons in the Union Army during the American Civil War. Along with the Gettysburg Address and his second inaugural address, the letter has been praised as one of Lincoln’s finest written works and is often reproduced in memorials, media, and print. 

Executive Mansion,

Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln.